United States in 1996

The United States of America is a federal republic composed of 50 states. Area: 9,362,753 sq km (3,614,979 sq mi), including 203,679 sq km of inland water but excluding the 155,534 sq km of the Great Lakes that lie within U.S. boundaries. Pop. (1996 est.): 265,455,000. Cap.: Washington, D.C. Monetary unit: U.S. dollar, with (Oct. 11, 1996) a free rate of U.S. $1.58 to £ 1 sterling. President in 1996, Bill Clinton.

In 1996 Bill Clinton (see BIOGRAPHIES) showed that he was a master at gauging shifts in national mood, and indeed of helping to create them, as he maneuvered in Washington, D.C., and campaigned across the country to become the first two-term U.S. president from the Democratic Party since Franklin D. Roosevelt 60 years earlier. Clinton’s victory over his Republican opponent, former senator Bob Dole (see BIOGRAPHIES), was all the more remarkable in that voters, in the lowest turnout since 1924, also returned a Republican-majority Congress for the first time since 1930. Never before had a Democrat won the nation’s highest office with the Congress controlled by his opponents. Once again, however, the people had opted for the U.S. equivalent of minority government. (SeeSpecial Report.)

Nonetheless, Clinton could claim a clear victory. He won 49.2% of the popular vote, compared with 40.8% for his Republican rival; the remainder went to maverick populist Ross Perot, who ran as the Reform Party candidate. According to exit polls, Clinton was particularly favoured by women, who endorsed him 54% to 38%; by African-Americans, who voted for him 83% to 12%; and by the elderly, who voted Democratic 50% to 43%. The Republican majority, by contrast, was shaved marginally in the House of Representatives and expanded slightly in the Senate. More than half of the Republican casualties came from among the representatives who had first been elected in 1994.

Clinton won his victory by moving with agility to the right, a talent he had demonstrated throughout his national political career but never against such odds as those he faced in 1996. In the process he managed to emerge once again in the public eye as a moderate. To many he seemed more moderate than Dole and his fellow Republicans, especially the aggressive speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, whom Clinton brilliantly demonized in the presidential campaign as an avatar of mean-minded radical conservatism, threatening the poor, the elderly, and the middle class with cuts in federally mandated entitlements. The net result was that Clinton, who began the year almost passively, with the government paralyzed through a budget deadlock, emerged as a mediating chief executive who could urge his defeated adversaries to join him in seeking a "common ground" during his upcoming term.

Clinton, moreover, achieved this feat despite a continuing rain of scandals great and small upon his administration. They covered everything from the continuing investigation into the decade-old Whitewater land deal to more sinister questions about the abuse of confidential FBI files on political opponents and the improper raising of campaign funds from non-U.S. sources. As the year closed, the U.S. Supreme Court was prepared to hear arguments on whether the president should be allowed, on account of his office, to postpone a civil suit leveled against him by Paula Corbin Jones, a former Arkansas state employee who alleged that Clinton had made sexual advances to her while he was governor. It was one sign of the administration’s political skills that, although none of the scandals had gone away by the end of 1996 and some might return to hurt the president in his second term, none proved fatal to Clinton’s reelection.

The Economy

The fact was that, however many questions were raised about the president’s character or that of his administration, other, more fundamental factors weighed heavily in favour of his reelection. The nation was at peace, and, above all, it was prosperous. The monetary manipulations of the Federal Reserve System (Fed) chairman, Alan Greenspan, and his Open Market Committee ensured that economic growth continued. The Fed cut short-term rates just before the new year began, with the aim of keeping growth in the range of 2.5% for 1996. Any fears of flat growth or recession were thus dispelled, and the president signaled his approval for this course by renominating Greenspan, a Republican, for his third four-year term as Fed chairman and naming two other economic moderates to the seven-member board.

The steady growth put further downward pressure on the U.S. jobless rate, which was only 5.6% when the year began. By the time the year ended, it was 5.3%, not much changed but nonetheless at the lowest level since the 1970s. Inflation, too, was contained, staying at roughly 2.5%. Blue-collar workers registered a real, if marginal, rise in income, as wage increases averaged 2.8%, and white-collar workers saw a 3.1% increase in pay. Overall economic productivity rose at a 1.2% rate, while productivity in manufacturing rose 3.2%. Thus, the nation’s economic progress was steady, if not muscular. One of the more negative signals, however, was the steady rise in personal bankruptcies, which reached more than one million during the year. There was also continued volatility in sectoral employment as large-scale corporate downsizing continued.

The most dynamic sector of the economy was the high-tech, particularly the computer-oriented, firms that continued to drive the stock market to new heights. In the first half of 1996, the sale of new public stock offerings continued to be one of the fastest avenues of growth for new companies, which went public at a rate of 70 or more per month. In the process many suddenly became worth 200 or 300 times their previous value, creating a steady procession of new millionaires. The same frothy optimism continued to affect more traditional stocks, as the Dow Jones industrial average continued its steady rise past 6,000. Among other things, the rise reflected a steady flow of money into equities from members of the baby-boomer generation, who were skeptical of the value of Social Security and were replacing it with contributions to such vehicles as 401(k) accounts. In midyear, however, there was a sudden correction in the upward rise of stocks, and the high-tech over-the-counter market, in particular, swooned. Nonetheless, by year’s end the market had recovered, albeit selectively.

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